


Time

by Who Shot AR (akerwis)



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Apologies, Circle of Magi, Gen, Mentors, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 11:35:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3690774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akerwis/pseuds/Who%20Shot%20AR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>What Aneirin needed, was time. Time to get used to his new home and to come out of his shell so we could build a rapport.</i>  In which Wynne endeavors not to make the same mistake twice and discovers it's more difficult than it looks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mautadite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/gifts).



Wynne didn’t want a new apprentice, but there was hardly justification to argue the point.  There weren’t so many enchanters present in their Circle that she could ignore one of the primary duties that came with the title.  Half a dozen children and teenagers had been delivered to their door by templars a few days ago—“Fresh meat,” one of them had joked, giving the huddled group a smile that had made Wynne want to shiver. 

When First Enchanter Lorne summoned her to his offices, she knew what it meant.  And she didn’t complain, but her feet dragged on the stairs and over the flagstones in the corridors.

“Wynne, this is Crescentia—“

“ _Lady_ Crescentia,” said the little girl standing next to Lorne.  She was a well-fed thing, lacking the hollow cheeks that marked some of their more unfortunate apprentices, and couldn’t have been more than twelve.  Her dark blonde hair was braided elaborately down her back, though strands were coming loose from her days of travel.  Nothing kind could be said about the imperious expression on her face just then.  She appeared to regard Wynne with a dubious sneer normally reserved for cockroaches.

Lorne paused, giving Wynne a look that said everything words couldn’t at that moment, and began again.  “This is Lady Crescentia Howe.  Lady Crescentia, this is Enchanter Wynne.  You will be apprenticed to her until such time as you are prepared to undergo the Harrowing and become a full mage of the Circle.  Do you have any questions?”

“Is she of noble birth?  I should think—“ Crescentia began.

“She is not.”  Best, Wynne thought, to cut that line of thinking off at the ankles.  Her voice was even, her gaze a stare to match her new apprentice’s.  _Maker, couldn’t I have someone biddable this time?_   “You will find that blood and lineage mean little in the Circle Tower.  Come—let’s get you settled.”

Giving a nod to the first enchanter, Wynne turned on her heel, expecting the girl to follow along behind her.  Not until she was nearly out the office door did she hear the start of stumbling footfalls at her back.  Lorne must have had to push her forward.

❧

Crescentia complained constantly.  The Circle Tower was cold.  Other mages, apprentices especially, refused to acknowledge her title.  The food was bland.  No one would brush her hair or help her dress in the morning. 

Wynne gritted her teeth as best she could.  After Aneirin, she could not afford to drive another apprentice away.  The temptation, however, was occasionally overwhelming. 

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a room to myself.”  Today’s grievance was the very notion of bunking with others, something Wynne had always found rather pleasant when she was a girl.  One never lay in the dark, accompanied by only one’s heartbeat.  There was always someone else breathing nearby, though listening to Alys snore could be a trial akin to the Harrowing.  “I’m not going to befriend a bunch of shoeless peasants and _elves_ —“

Wynne had started to let her mind wander towards other things when Crescentia whined, giving the girl room to adjust to her new home.  Wasn’t that what they’d decided Aneirin had lacked?  Hadn’t she been too stern with him, too demanding at the start?  But hearing Crescentia’s apparent loathing for everyone around her—herself included, given her own history as a smudged, raggedy urchin—had become more than she could tolerate.

“Those shoeless peasants and elves,” Wynne replied, the words sharp and bitter in her mouth, “are your colleagues.  If you have any hope of thriving within the Circle—and you certainly will not thrive elsewhere as a mage—then you will do well to find friends among them.  We are not here to be your servants, and we will not play at that role just because you are used to a more luxurious life than the Circle of Magi offers.  Many of your fellow apprentices suffered far more to come here, and yet they do the duty the Maker has laid out for them without complaint.  You, meanwhile, have yet to go an hour without finding fault with every stone in this castle.  I shouldn’t wonder if they don’t care to get along with you.”

By the time she finished, the words had taken on all the frustration and sorrow she’d felt at Aneirin’s disappearance.  She hardly saw Crescentia before her; her vision was filled with a scowl beneath a fine thatch of red hair, the darting blue eyes of a boy whose distrust of humanity was well-earned.  The words might have been directed at her apprentice, but the feeling behind them was for Wynne’s

But it was Crescentia Howe who sat across the table from her, pen and parchment—on which she’d been meant to take notes—forgotten sometime in the midst of her tutor’s tirade.  And it was Crescentia Howe who sniffled, stricken, and blinked her eyes quickly, a gesture Wynne recognized from her own past attempts not to cry.

Before Wynne could say anything, Crescentia kicked her bench back and ran from the library.

❧

Some enchanters, Wynne thought, were not meant to have apprentices.  This was the second she’d failed.  How long would it be until they heard there was a second escape?  A second phylactery-guided chase, a second ugly, needless death?  And then her inevitable, now richly deserved demotion, and a life of ignominy.

After Crescentia had left, Wynne had stood awkwardly, trying not to feel the gaze of every other mage in the room on her.  Should she go and speak to the girl?  No.  She doubted she’d be a welcome presence at this point, and she didn’t know what to say, anyway.

She’d gone to the Chantry, where she always seemed to think a little more clearly, and knelt, her arms wrapping around herself.  Everything that just transpired was wrong, and she knew it.  Losing her temper with a child, a child who was still adjusting to a serious change in her life, and failing to guide her—that was not the behavior of a good enchanter, and it wasn’t, Wynne wanted to believe, her own best nature at work.

 _Spite ate away all that was good, kind, and loving till nothing was left but the spite itself, coiled 'round my heart like a great worm._ It wasn’t a pleasant moment to remember the Canticle of Maferath, but she couldn’t help but feel a sort of kinship with the feeling it described.  Not spite, but sorrow and disappointment and disgust at her mistakes ate at her, and it threatened to make her unfit for her work.

She could do better than this.  For the first time since she was told she would have an apprentice called Aneirin, she believed she could train a student to use magic safely and wisely. Surely she could be the tutor Crescentia—and later, others—needed.  But that meant making amends for her behavior and taking care to see that she never again allowed her past failures to swallow her.

And that meant going to look for her apprentice.

❧

It wasn’t difficult to find Crescentia; not only was she in her room, the one she shared with her peers, but her sniffling was still loud enough to hear from the corridor.  (I’m lucky she isn’t sobbing, Wynne thought, and then realized that she might well have missed that stage of her apprentice’s misery.)  Wynne knocked at the door before slipping inside, relieved to see that they were alone.  Most apprentices were busy with their lessons at that time of day, rather than sprawled out on their beds, weeping over the heartless commentary their tutors offered them.

Crescentia looked up from the pillow she’d buried her head in.  When she saw who her visitor was, she made a face and turned away again.  “What do you want?”

“I want to apologize.”  The words were easier to say than Wynne anticipated, even if they still didn’t feel like easy conversation.  The Maker had her on the right path—she hoped.  “May we speak?”

She received a shrug in answer and took it for a yes.  Crossing the room, she gingerly took a seat at the edge of Crescentia’s bed, her hands folded in her lap.

There was no further comment from Crescentia, who apparently was waiting for her promised apology—and reasonably so, Wynne thought.  She ought not to keep her waiting.  “When I spoke to you earlier, I was unkind.  Worse than unkind—I was cruel.  You deserve a tutor who has your best interests at heart, and when I said those things, I didn’t.  I’m sorry.”

For several long moments, she got no response but the quiet of the room.  Her chest felt pinched, and, in hopes of quelling her rising sense of dread, she added, “If you would prefer to study under someone else, I will speak with the First Enchanter.  I do not expect you to—“

“Nobody here likes me.”  The words were more moan than anything, a lower, far more personal variant on the petty complaints Wynne had heard for days now.  “The other girls call me spoilt because I asked for an extra blanket, and somebody tripped me in the hall yesterday, and they made me leave my cat at home.  I’m never going to see her again.  And everyone _hates_ me.”

The last words dissolved into a sob, one that reminded Wynne keenly of her loneliest days before the Circle.  Hungry and cold and—before she realized it, she was stroking Crescentia’s golden hair.  It was a nest of snarls under her hand, no longer the neat, intricate braids that had fallen to her waist.

“I don’t hate you.  I couldn’t hate you.”  And it was true, thank the Maker.  She couldn’t hate a little girl for being frightened of a place where everything was different and everything seemed worse than it had.  She couldn’t quite relate to the feeling, but she couldn’t blame her for her feelings.  “I think you’re a fine young woman—and you could be a very fine mage, too.”

She didn’t receive a response right away.  Crescentia was too busy crying; it felt like watching someone mourn, a sensation that made Wynne want to back away, out of her all-too-personal grief, and gather the girl up in her arms.  She did neither, settling for continuing to comb her hand over Crescentia’s hair, making vague plans to help her brush and braid it—and see that she learned to do those tasks herself.

After she’d quieted, lying there on her bed and breathing less and less noisily, Crescentia raised her head.  Her eyes were a reddened mess, her cheeks tearstained.  “Everyone at home calls me Cressy.”

Wynne’s smile was immediate and surprised.  The comment seemed like a non-sequitur…but its purpose quickly became clear.  “Cressy?  Would you like me to call you that?”

Crescentia— _Cressy_ —nodded, giving a long sniff, and gratefully took the handkerchief Wynne handed her. 

After Cressy had swiped at her face and blown her nose, Wynne spoke again.  “As I said, if you would prefer to be reassigned, we can arrange that.  I couldn’t ask you to—“

“No.”  She shook her head, twisting one corner of the handkerchief between her hands.  “I want to be your apprentice."

“Are you sure?”

“As long as you don’t yell at me like that again.”  The smile she tried was soft, a little hesitant.

“I’ll gladly agree to those terms.”  Wynne smiled back, patting her apprentice on the shoulder gently.  Perhaps, she thought, she could coax something else into coiling around her heart.  Warmth; belief in others; wisdom.  And she could begin here.


End file.
